Press and daily Dakotaian. (Yankton, Dakota Territory [S.D.]) 1880-1889, 1887-10-15
HER THRILLING TRIALS.
EXPERIENCES OF A FAlTHLEss
WIFE IN THE WEST.

DESERVING Home and Husband in the
Daring Cowboy-She Falls Into the
Hands of snake Indians.
NEW YORK, Oct. 14.-Augusta Lees
ner, a beautiful, buxom blonde Of 20
years, who came from Saxony in 1884,
was met and wooed and won almost in-
mediately by Xavier. Gramer, a widower
with six children and about fifteen years
her senior, anet ne took her to his home
II Brooklyn. The new wife soon had
numbers of admirers, and as she and the
children could not get along together,
she eloped with a Cowboy and started
for the far west. A few months ago
Gramer received from his wife a letter
dated at Walla Walia, Washington ter
ritory, reciting an almost incredible story
of adventure and nomadic life that,
while it was interesting, showed Mr..
Gramer q way to a permanent release
from tie matrimonial bonds which still
theoretically bound them together. She
wrote that she had gone to Detroit and
Joined interests with a party of emigrants
bound for Idaho, where they proposed to
engage in farming,
On the way across the plains she
learned how to ride and how to shoot as
became a pioneer m The emf
grants were disappointed about getting
the land they had intended to settle upon
as homesteaders, and SO determined to
go on farther and engage in stock rails
ing. Mrs. Gramer went with them, as
cisft1,y ~ Al La.,a1y;,, o-I ~, ,,-@rl-
when they were in camp and driving and
herding while or the march. One day
the party learned that buffaloes we're in
herd not far distant, and the men were
wild to get a shot at them. Mrs. Gramer
insisted upon going with them, and al
though they tried to persuade her to re-
main with the wagons she was obdurate
and they concluded by taking her along.
Mounted on an ugly little mustang and
carrying a rifle across her saddle, she
rode with the men until the game came
in sight, when in the consequent excite
ment and commotion she became sepal-
ated from the party, and her mustang
CHANGING to stumble she was thrown and
had her leg broken.
She lay helpless for several hours in a
slight depression in the ground, suffering
excruciating pain, when a band of Snake
Indians, who had been hunting the buf-
falo, came along and discovered her.
They took her up tenderly and a half
breed medicine man among them man
aged to set her broken limb. Making a
litter for her of long poles and wicker
| work that was trailed along the ground
behind a pony, the Indians took her with
them on their journey toward the Colum.
bia river. During her convalescense she
was the recipient of distinguished atten-
tions from the chief of the band, who
proposed to install her as the head of his
household. But feigning greater weak.
ness and suffering than were real, she
threw the Indians off their guard, and,
when an opportunity presented itself, she
seized a mustang and effected her escape
TO. party of cowsboys in the near neigh.
borhood, by whom she was given an en-
| thusiastic welcome. She was the only
woman within many miles, and was
treated with the utmost gallantry by the
semi-civilized stock-raisers. who handed
over to her the charge of their camp.
h writes that she is delighted with the
WHO, Tree life she is leading among the
cowboys, by whom she is treated like q
| queen, and whom she invests with a no.
bility and gallantry she did not find pre-.
Valent among the citizens of Brooklyn.
She said she would never return to civil
lied society again.
Mr.. Gramer has begun an action for s
divorce absolute, and, the summons by
publication having been returned prop.
erly executed, the case was set down fo,
an early hearing.